June 2, 2003	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 1, 1424

AMMAN, June 1: A Jordanian court on Sunday sentenced a Japanese photojournalist to 18 months in jail when a “souvenir” explosive he had taken from the Iraqi battlefield exploded in his luggage at Amman international airport, killing a security guard.

Hiroki Gomi, 36, told his interrogators that he was carrying the bomb as a “souvenir” from the U.S.-led war that led to the downfall of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

On his way home to Japan, he was boarding an EgyptAir flight to Cairo at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman on May 1 when the explosive went off killing Ali Sarhan and wounding three others.

Jordan’s State Security Court found Gomi “guilty of unintentional killing”, but reduced the three-year jail penalty to 18 months because the Sarhan family had “waived their personal rights”, the court said in its decision.

Gomi and his Jordanian translator Abdul Salem Helweh were cleared of the charge of illegal possession of an explosive “for the absence of the criminal objective, as they did not know that they were carrying such explosive object”, the court said. Jordanian experts concluded the device was a cluster bomblet.

Gomi, who works with the Japanese “Mainichi” newspaper, received the verdict calmly and did not make any immediate comment on the ruling.

At the start of the trial, which began a week ago, Gomi told the court that he was not guilty, but he apologized to the people of Jordan. There has been speculation that the Japanese journalist would be pardoned by King Abdullah and released shortly.—dpa